Thraves thrives

After a decade out of British cinemas, director Jamie Thraves's Treacle Jr (see Philip French's review this week) sees the return of a film-maker much admired for his debut, The Low Down, in 2000. I'm pleased to see that the Irish actor Aidan Gillen has stuck by Thraves, even now that his star has risen after roles in The Wire and Game of Thrones. The pair are now working on another collaboration, a music film, which will combine Gillen's rock-star fantasies with Thraves's skills honed making videos for Radiohead, Coldplay and Dizzee Rascal. Thraves remortgaged his house to make Treacle Jr and shot it for £30,000, composing and playing much of the soundtrack himself. The film is part of the New British Cinema Quarterly programme funded by Soda Pictures, an innovation of which Trash heartily approves, taking four British films a year on nationwide cinema tours with the director popping in to the special screenings to do Q&A sessions, sometimes accompanied by the film's actors – all a bit like a rock band on the road.

A very naughty boy

Treacle Jr actor Tom Fisher is to play Monty Python star Graham Chapman in a BBC drama reconstructing the controversy surrounding the release of Life of Brian in 1979. Holy Flying Circus, for BBC4, will focus on the Pythons' defence of their comedy – now acknowledged as one of the funniest films ever made – when members of the church accused them of heresy and sacrilege, particularly during a famous debate on television hosted by Malcolm Muggeridge and including the bishop of Southwark.

Fame at last

I've been backing Soda's NBCQ programme in this column since its inception, but I must now also declare an interest. I've just found out that a film in which I have a small but eye-catching role has been selected as one of this year's movies. It's called Junkhearts and I star in it – OK, I make a fleeting cameo in it as a barman – alongside Eddie Marsan, Tom Sturridge and Romola Garai. A dark urban thriller, with Marsan on top form, it should be in a cinema somewhere near you in the late autumn, maybe with me in tow. Just don't ask me to make cocktails.

Bad hair days

Talking of Eddie Marsan, I wrote here a few months ago that he was directing and starring in a film version of Richard III which I was reliably informed would be set in the 1980s. Eddie has since told me it will be very much set in the 1960s, but that my story almost made him consider the 80s. "But," he says, "I would never get my hair to do that Flock of Seagulls thing."

Marty's movies

Festivalgoers at the oh-so-genteel event at Port Eliot in Cornwall this week will be enjoying a selection of films by Martin Scorsese. The director was persuaded to curate the programme by his long-standing costume designer Sandy Powell, who is a Port Eliot regular. Marty's picks for the Paradiso Outdoor cinema feature a nightly double bill to match the festival's setting: on a river estuary, in the shadow of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's railway viaduct. So, among others, he's picked the late Sidney Lumet's Murder on the Orient Express and Jean Renoir's The River. His restored print of Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes will also be playing, while Emeric Pressburger's film‑making grandchildren, Andrew and Kevin Macdonald, will show their documentary The Making of An Englishman, which reconstructs Emeric's journey from exile in Hungary to settling in London in 1935.